Warlord

by Jennifer Fallon

  Kalan scowled at him. “Cadella’s master key, I suppose?”

  He shrugged. “What can I say? She likes me.”

  Kalan looked back out over the small garden with its two fresh graves. “Cadella’s not the only one in this house who likes you, apparently.”

  Wrayan placed the key on the small table by the door, before closing it behind him. “And just exactly what is that supposed to mean?”

  “You don’t need me to explain it, Wrayan.”

  “I think your mother might like an explanation. You owe her an apology, too. Your behaviour at dinner was appalling.”

  Kalan turned back to glare at him. “Don’t you dare lecture me on my manners!”

  Wrayan crossed the room, stopping by the bed. He leaned against the bedpost and studied her curiously. “Have I done something to upset you?”

  “Of course not!” she exclaimed. “I’m just being childish, aren’t I? Isn’t that why you’re here? To scold me for my appalling etiquette? Do you think sleeping with my mother gives you the right to act like my father?”

  Wrayan was silent. If Kalan hadn’t known better, she might have thought he was shocked by the accusation. Maybe he was shocked, but only because he believed nobody would ever learn the truth.

  “I see,” he said after a time. “You thought what you saw down in the hall earlier was proof your mother and I are lovers?”

  Kalan glared at him. Far from being offended or guilty, he sounded amused.

  “I’m not stupid, Wrayan.”

  “Up until just now, I probably would have agreed with you, Kalan.”

  She was staggered by his denial. “You as good as admitted it to me!”

  “If you’re talking about the conversation we had on the way to Greenharbour about whether or not I’ve ever been in love, Kalan Hawksword, I don’t believe your mother actually rated a mention.”

  “You said the woman you loved was way out of your reach.”

  He smiled. “And you think the only woman in the world who falls into that category is your mother? I’m truly flattered by your high opinion of me, Kalan.”

  “Don’t you dare patronise me!”

  “Then don’t behave like a child.”

  Kalan looked away, determined not to let him see her pain. “I know what I saw, Wrayan.”

  “You saw me comforting a friend, Kalan. That’s all it was. Your mother’s lost a good husband and her closest friend within weeks of each other and if you’d hung around a bit longer at dinner, you would have found out Elezaar’s parting gift to his beloved mistress was to blab every secret he knew about the Wolfblades to Alija Eaglespike’s favourite lackey, Tarkyn Lye, right before poisoning himself and dying in your mother’s arms.”

  Kalan stared at him in shock. “But that’s not possible! Elezaar would never betray us!”

  “This really is your night for badly misjudging people, isn’t it?”

  Kalan swung her feet around and stood up from the window seat, not sure what concerned her the most, Elezaar’s betrayal or the idea she might have misread what she saw in the hall and made a complete fool of herself. “Is my mother all right?”

  “Of course she’s not all right, Kalan. She’s devastated. And what’s more, she needs your help to fight Alija. If you ever get over this little jealousy tantrum you appear to be having, you might realise that.”

  “I’m not jealous!” she gasped, horrified to think she’d been so transparent. Afraid he could tell what she was thinking—even if he wasn’t actually reading her mind—Kalan tried to put some distance between them but Wrayan caught her arm as she passed him and stopped her.

  “Your mind is shielded, Kalan, your emotions aren’t.”

  “Let go of me.”

  “It would never work, you and I.”

  “Because I’m too young for you, I suppose?” she asked. “Well, you’re right, Wrayan. You should probably only get involved with women your own age. So tell me. What are you planning to do when you’re two hundred years old and still look thirty? Only court two-hundred-year-old women?”

  He sighed. “It’s not that simple, Kalan.”

  “That excuse is starting to wear a little thin, Wrayan.”

  “Then be practical,” he suggested. “Even if we ignore the inconvenient reality that I’m twice your age, despite the fact I don’t look it; even if we discount the possibility of your mother sending an assassin after me if she thought I’d laid a hand on her daughter, I can’t give you what you want, Kalan. I’m not in love with you and the cruel reality is, I’m never going to be.”

  “What’s her name?” Kalan asked, pulling her arm free. Her anger was fading in light of his honesty. She hadn’t expected such candour from him.

  “Shananara.”

  “The Harshini princess?”

  He nodded.

  “Way out of your reach, eh? I guess you weren’t kidding.”

  Wrayan smiled apologetically. “On the bright side, she is over two hundred years old …”

  “Is she beautiful?”

  “Indescribably. But it’s not just about physical beauty, Kalan.”

  “You told me the Harshini may never emerge from hiding again,” she reminded him, not prepared to give up her dreams without a fight. “Certainly not in my lifetime and probably not in yours. Don’t you think it’s foolish to deny yourself any chance of happiness on the off-chance the Harshini may come back, some day?”

  “You think I’m deliberately masochistic? I want to be happy as much as any man. And that’s the problem. Even if she came back tomorrow, it wouldn’t make any difference. There’s no happy-ever-after waiting for me. I’ll be lucky if she remembers my name in another ten years. Shananara is Harshini. They don’t look at the world the way you and I do. They’re not even capable of loving the way humans understand it. But they have this gift … this way of … I can’t explain it really; it’s something you can’t appreciate unless you’ve experienced it. The Harshini even have a name for it.”

  “Kalianah’s curse,” Kalan said softly, beginning to understand. “It’s what happens when a mortal falls in love with a Harshini. I’ve heard of it. But Wrayan, it’s not as if we couldn’t …”

  He put his finger on her lips to stop her protests. “Don’t, Kal … there’s no point.”

  Her eyes glistened with unshed tears, as the logical part of Kalan understood what he was telling her, even while her heart was shattering into a million little pieces at his touch. “So that’s it? I can’t ever love you, Kalan, so let’s just be friends?”

  “Given the family you come from,” he remarked dryly, “I certainly don’t want to be your enemy.”

  She sniffed back her tears and drew herself up proudly, determined to preserve what little dignity she had left. “So you’re telling me to grin and bear it? That I’m doomed to go through life suffering the pain of an unrequited love?”

  Wrayan shrugged.

  “Welcome to my world,” he said.

  CHAPTER 27

  Of all the wounds Mahkas Damaran had received at the hands of his ungrateful nephew, the most inconvenient was the fact he could no longer command authority simply by speaking his will. Damin’s rage-driven fist had severed his vocal cords and only Rorin Mariner’s ability as a magical healer had saved Mahkas’s life and stopped him bleeding to death where he fell. But the young man was not skilled enough, it seemed, to save his voice.

  Mahkas had his suspicions about that. Although he’d heard Rorin pleading with Damin to spare his uncle’s life, his reasons were political not personal. Rorin Mariner couldn’t have cared less about Mahkas Damaran. What he cared about was the political make-up of the Convocation of Warlords. That preserving one meant saving the other, was purely incidental.

  Perhaps, Mahkas mused, it wasn’t a lack of skill, after all, that prevented the young sorcerer from repairing my throat, but a lack of will.

  He paced his office impatiently, rubbing at the sore spot on his arm as he worried about it, working hi
mself into another frenzy. The lump in his arm was swollen and painful. He’d barely left it alone since Damin attacked him.

  “Did you hear me, Uncle Mahkas?”

  He looked up in surprise. With all this worrying, he’d forgotten Xanda was in the room. He’d forgotten what they were talking about, too.

  “Of course I heard you!” he snapped in a hoarse whisper.

  “Then you don’t mind if I issue the order to unseal the city?”

  “Why?” Mahkas demanded anxiously. Unsealing the city meant letting strangers in. Worse, it meant letting Damin back in.

  “Because … as we were just discussing … the threat of the plague seems to be waning,” Xanda explained patiently. “We’re not surrounded by refugees fleeing the southern provinces as we feared we might be. There hasn’t been a new case of the plague reported in weeks. And the issue of food is becoming critical. We can avoid most of those problems right now by simply throwing open the gates.”

  “Throw open the gates,” Mahkas muttered, pacing up and down behind the desk. “He’s probably just waiting for me to do that.”

  Xanda strained to hear him. “Who’s waiting for what?”

  “Your damned cousin,” he rasped, pointing to his ruined throat. “The bastard who did this to me!”

  “Damin is in Cabradell,” Xanda reminded him.

  “He says he’s in Cabradell,” he exclaimed, his scorn actually causing him physical pain. “Who can believe a word that treacherous bastard says? For all I know he’s sitting at the Walsark Crossroads with an army—my army, mind you—just waiting for me to open the gates. Just waiting for me to let down my guard.” He rubbed furiously at the sore spot on his arm again. “He’s already tried to get the rest of them, you know. Tried smuggling them out of the city under the pretext of a Fardohnyan invasion. But I put a stop to that, quick smart. There weren’t many men anxious to join that smug little bastard once I put an arrow through Raek Harlan’s chest, let me tell you.”

  “I was there, Uncle,” Xanda said in an odd tone. “I saw what happened.”

  Mahkas chose to take Xanda’s flat voice as a favourable sign. At least he didn’t fly into a rage over the smallest little things like his cousin. “He’s out there, Xanda. You mark my words.”

  “If you fear that, Uncle, let me send someone out to check,” his nephew offered.

  He kept shaking his head, back and forth, like a dog worrying at a bone. “They might not come back. Whoever I send might desert us. Or Damin would kill him. Yes, that’s what would happen, Damin would kill him. Like he tried to kill me. And to think, I was almost going to let him marry my daughter!” He coughed painfully, alarmed to find his spittle flecked with blood. Rorin had warned him not to overdo it, but it was hard. So very, very hard.

  Particularly when he had so much to say.

  The door opened while he was still recovering from his coughing fit. It was Bylinda, all pale and pathetic in her mourning white. She never bothered to knock these days. Nobody did. There was no point. They couldn’t hear him calling permission to enter.

  She smiled wanly at Xanda. “Good morning, Xanda.”

  “Aunt Bylinda.”

  “Will you and Luciena be joining us for dinner this evening?”

  Mahkas glared at her. There were more important things going on here than her bloody social arrangements.

  “Do you mind!” he tried to shout, but she ignored him, pretending she didn’t hear his hoarse yelling.

  “Actually, my lady, Luciena and I thought we should join the children in the nursery for dinner. Lady Lionsclaw’s boys are feeling a little homesick and they miss their mother. She feels they need the company.”

  Bylinda touched his arm, her grip fragile. “You’re very good to those children, Xanda. And a good father to your own children, too. You don’t see that too often, these days.”

  She curtseyed to her nephew and, without even acknowledging her husband, turned and drifted out of the room, off to do the gods knew what. She’d been like that a lot, lately. Vague, detached … her eyes, on the rare occasion Mahkas could get her to look at him, full of grief. Full of pain.

  And full of accusation.

  “It’s her own fault, you know,” Mahkas rasped.

  Xanda looked at him. “Pardon?”

  “What happened to Leila,” he explained. “It’s Bylinda’s fault.”

  Xanda actually looked surprised. Young men … they just don’t get it, Mahkas lamented silently. They splash their seed around and sire a few brats and think fatherhood gives them some sort of insight into human nature.

  “Women are weak,” he explained to his nephew, glad of the opportunity to impart some of his own wisdom to the young man. “They need to be disciplined. That’s why Leila was so easily corrupted. I let Bylinda take care of the discipline when she was younger and it clearly wasn’t enough …” He coughed again, the pain in his ravaged throat getting worse with every word he uttered.

  Xanda rushed to his side and helped him into his seat. “You need to stop talking, Uncle. You need to rest. Trust me, you’ve said quite enough for one day.”

  Mahkas nodded wordlessly. It hurt too much to speak.

  “I’ll take care of things here,” Xanda promised. “You should go back to bed and take something for the pain.”

  He’s such a good lad, Xanda Taranger.

  Living proof of Mahkas’s theory about women and discipline, too. Mahkas had removed the irritation of Xanda’s mother, Darilyn, from the boy’s life when he was only six years old and look how well he’d turned out without a woman to corrupt him.

  “Just one thing,” Mahkas managed, as Xanda helped him to his feet and gave him an arm to lean on as they walked across the rug to the door.

  “What’s that, Uncle?”

  “Unseal the city without my authority,” he gasped painfully, “and I’ll have you hanged for treason.”

  Xanda didn’t react immediately to his threat. He hesitated just long enough for Mahkas to be certain that’s exactly what his nephew had been planning to do as soon as he had his back turned.

  “As you wish, Uncle,” he said eventually, opening the door.

  Xanda beckoned one of the guards waiting outside to help his lord to his room. Mahkas winced as he accepted the soldier’s support, but was satisfied he could sleep now, and wake to find he still had a city under his control.

  He smiled at his nephew, just to let him know he knew what he’d been thinking, but he didn’t hold it against him. He was a bigger man than that. “Just so long as we understand each other, Xanda.”

  “I understand, Uncle,” Xanda replied. “Better than you think.”

  “Then there won’t be any problems, will there?”

  “No, my lord.”

  Mahkas patted his arm encouragingly. “There’s a good lad.”

  And then he turned and let the guards help him back down the long corridor, leaving Xanda Taranger staring after him thoughtfully and in no doubt about who was really in control of Krakandar Province.

  CHAPTER 28

  Marla was working at her desk when the door opened and Kalan let herself into the study.

  “Good afternoon, Kalan.” She hadn’t seen her daughter since she’d stormed out of dinner the evening before.

  “Mother.”

  “Is there something I can do for you? As you can see, I’m rather busy.”

  “I came to say I’m sorry.”

  Marla put down her quill and studied her daughter thoughtfully. “Is that because you are sorry, or because Wrayan told you to apologise?”

  “Both, actually,” Kalan admitted as she took a seat on the other side of the desk. “He told me about Elezaar, too.”

  Marla shrugged. “It’s a done deed now. No point in losing sleep over it.”

  “I can’t believe you’re taking it so calmly.”

  “I’m not. I’m just better than you at hiding my feelings.”

  Kalan had the decency to look away guiltily. Marla’s heart w
ent out to her. She knew what Kalan’s tantrum had been about, just as she knew that despite everything she’d done to discourage it, Kalan had doted on Wrayan since she was a small child. Her fantasy must have seemed so real, so achievable, Marla thought. Here was a man who hadn’t visibly aged in thirty years. To a young girl with a hopeless crush it must have seemed as if the gods had stopped time for Wrayan, to allow her a chance to catch up. What Kalan didn’t understand—and there had never been any reason until now to explain it to her—was that the two years Wrayan spent among the Harshini had done more than teach him to wield magic proficiently. He’d been one of them. Lived with them. Loved with them. Such a rare opportunity was a double-edged sword. They’d saved his life, given him a chance to live the long life his distant Harshini ancestry would allow him, but it came at a cost.

  Wrayan was in love with a Harshini.

  The Sisters of the Blade in Medalon had set out to destroy their entire race because of what that could do to a human.

  “Did I act like a complete fool last night?” she asked.

  “Yes,” her mother replied bluntly. Then she smiled. “But I wouldn’t worry about it, darling. Wrayan doesn’t think any less of you for it.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ve been in love just as desperately, Kalan,” Marla told her daughter. “And for a while, I was the happiest I’ve ever been in my entire life. But it also caused me the most intense pain I’ve ever experienced. Worse, even, than childbirth.”

  Kalan frowned. “I thought childbirth was supposed to be a wonderful and moving time for a woman?”

  “That’s a lie men spread about to convince us we should keep having babies for them,” Marla grumbled. “Don’t believe a word of it. Childbirth hurts like hell.”

  Kalan smiled faintly, but her amusement soon faded in the face of their more serious problems. “What are you going to do about Alija?”

  “Destroy her.”

  Kalan wasn’t even a little surprised. “That’s a given, I would have thought. But how are you going to do it? You can’t just have the High Arrion killed. That would destabilise the whole damn country at a time we can least afford it.”